Redheads in Paradise
by xxxPiratePrincessxxx
Summary: AU Rosamund/Carlisle. Several drabbly chapters focusing around the imagined relationship of our favourite redheads: besides Sybil's Irish beaux of course ;)
1. Prologue

_Prologue_

He first saw her in the autumn, at a ball filled with the young and the beautiful, when the falling leaves were the same colour as the molten spray of her hair. She is reaching the end of her out season, eighteen years old and uncourted for her false smile filled with teeth flashing like knives in the dark, clenched so offputtingly to trap acidic, unladylike words. He studied her face, nose like a knife, lips so thin, delicate bones moving beneath papery white skin. That pale flesh would wrinkle soon; there are already thin webs around her startling blue gaze and her coy mouth is bracketed by thin laughter lines. If she continued to stand still and alone beneath the shedding trees, the leaves would gather around her, moulder and cocoon her in decay, snake into her serpentine eyes, writhe beneath the cage of her ribs and snuff out the thudding ruby beneath. She would rot in her own self-hatred and odd lack of faith in the world. He could let her. He should let her.

And then she turns, catches sight of him like a trick of the light in the corner of one of her brilliant eyes. And she _smiles._

Richard Carlisle arranges to meet Rosamund Crawley's father in the next week.

The month after that, Rosamund writes in neat, flowing cursive onto a dotted line her first name, hand steady, fingers arranged gracefully.

The wedding band bruises the knuckle of her ring finger as she scratches _Carlisle _after it.


	2. Honeymoon

Rosamund vaulted the struts of the make-shift fence just as the spear whizzed into the tree posts, scattering splinters of flaky white bark. Unhurriedly taking shelter under a holly bush, she reloaded her pistol as a tall, slope-shouldered man in traditional native Kenyan costume slid beside her, his apparel rather at odds with his gingerish hair and Oxford tie.

"Is it just me," she said, over the nearing howls of angry tribesman, "but did you grossly misinterpret those signs?"

Richard Carlisle, being Richard Carlisle, was perfectly calm and dignified despite the painted beads (_Manly beads, my dear Rose) _and responded by hurling a boulder the size of his own head back at his pursuers, who made wonderful shrieking sounds as the missile impacted. 

"I – it said _sacred pool, _not _lavatory. _How was I supposed to know?"

"You were supposed to know," Rosamund said drily, gazing at her dung-splattered skirt, "because you _fully read the signs._"

"It seems to be alright so far," Carlisle remarked, peering over the branches. "They're arguing over who's going after the infidels. It looks like the chief is hitting the second-in-command with his shield." Rosamund looked at him. The limp stretch of red cloth tied neatly around his neck fluttered like a scarlet tongue, the underneath stitched with two initials: _R.C. _It could stand for his, could stand for hers. It seems oddly appropriate that she should be against his sunburnt skin, when the closest they had come physically was when they collided running from different directions. Well, from the chief's two strikingly tattooed daughters, but that was back when he still had his suit, and not so much -_bare skin_ on display. He craned his neck backward to avoid a neatly aimed pomegranate and the fuzz on his nape glimmered gold. Ah, strawberry blondes.

A faint, rhythmic grunting sound pervaded over the yellow African air, in time with a soft _thump thump_; footsteps sounding. More occupied with cocking her pistol than dealing with yet another strange noise, Rosamund fired two dead-aim shots at the blur of grass skirt over the branches and felt the recoil shudder in her delicate wrists, bruising bones hardwired for the heaviest weight to be an ornate teacup. Oh, to be an Englishwoman of frail, noble descent.

Rosamund frowned. The footsteps were of some large, heavy animal, and they were definitely _getting closer_. Carlisle, retreating in defence of his rapidly diminishing tie (_and clothes, god, that naked sweaty FRECKLED muscled chest) _gave a glance aside at his newlywed bride, hot and uncomfortable in her fashionable lavender gown, gazing across at him from beneath a patchwork of exotic twigs. It occurred to him that this was probably the only genuine conversation they had had since he had retreated to his room on the wedding night, and she the smaller chamber across the hall, that massive clumsy corridor like a property line between them, a division symbol with the little black dots unloved and unhappy on either side. He knew the same thought had ticked over in the cogs beneath the curls, and mentally cursed as that awful awkwardness rose up between them once again, every second of their five-day marriage (and subsequent thrilling honeymoon) forming that gloomy corridor all the way out here in the African plains.

"Shouldn't we be running by now?"

"Not without Cora," Rosamund snapped, quite seriously. "Speaking of which, she was carried upside down into the camp a long while before we were – "

The flowering bushes to their right rattled suddenly with the oncoming tremble of a very large, very near charging animal, and the newlyweds flung themselves aside as a bellowing rhino with a very unhappy rider _kapow-ed_ through their would-be protection.

Cora Crawley prayed loudly and lamented louder and clung on with white thighs onto the bucking, painfully-knobbly spine that belonged to the huge bucking gray beast beneath her, sunburnt arms locked tightly around the protruding horn, kittenish eyes made wider by her terror and unwelcome adrenaline.

Carlisle sacrificed his precious silk-weave tie and threw it, strung with rather sharp ornamental beads into its small, bloodshot eyes, halting it temporarily and at the same time jerking the future Countess of Downton from danger with one long arm. He pulled the two women to their feet, wrapped the weak Cora close, and caught sight of the downward ridge that marked the edge of the camp, where he now knew a dirt footpath leading away from a grotto-ensconced fountain would curve toward the gleaming white, respectable manor house reserved for British nobility. Gleaming white _clean, tie-stocked_ manor house. Lacking soil and not lacking polite servants and surrounded by gardens where stroppy wives _did not storm off into Unknown Dangers in a sulk._

_"I'm sick of you," Rosamund hissed beneath the parasol, glaring up at her husband, who had just won a particularly petty argument. "I'm going for a walk. God knows what Unknown Dangers I'll find." _

_"Go then!" Carlisle yelled, in a half-hearted attempt at a sneer. "Go off and find some natives to annoy on their honeymoons!" The remark was lost on the retreating figure of Rosamund and the wait-Rose-not-without-me figure of Cora Crawley._

Ruefully regretting his ill-begotten solitary rescue attempt (turned on its head by his brief refreshing in that blasted fountain), Carlisle found a slim, cream-and-pink paw slipped into his, and on instinct, he squeezed, gently. And, ever so briefly, the slightest of pressures back.

"Run." Rosamund ordered.

They did.

"I lie demurely on sofas," Cora sighs through a mouthful of cucumber sandwich, the foot with the blister up on a pouffe. "I am an heiress recently married to one of the most influential men in England. Now I'm reduced to rodeoing rhinos. Pass me a napkin." Rosamund does. "And not a word about American liberty. _We have our limits_."

Rosamund snorts in a ladylike manner and dabs the tea from the cherrywood table with her sleeve. The two of them are reclining gracefully on full-length chaises, parallelograms of white-edged sunlight inching the way up their freshly changed clothes. Carlisle is somewhere. Rosamund suspects alternate blackmail and threats. Most probably concerned with hushing the Embassy up to not rat on them to Dear Brother Robert. The sitting room is vast, beautiful art adorning the walls, and a delicious African footman serving them lemonade and triangles of dainty white bread, with sumptuous chocolate skin and the most appealing velvety dark eyes. She's been making a point of brushing her long fingers against his outstretched gloves whenever she reaches for a snack, and she thinks it is accurate that her sister-in-law's last comment was possibly directed at that. Naturally, in reply she near caresses his knuckles when filching a cranberry-cheese segment from the tray.

"_Ros_."

"Cora."

"Mjambe, would you please leave?"

The footman, remarkably kept for the scandalous behaviour of the redhead, bows and exits the room. Once he's gone, Cora turns to her, and Rosamund winces at the pattern of shiny sunburn spread along her lily-white features.

"You're on your honeymoon, Ros. I know the match was hurried and not what you had in mind, but Richard Carlisle is a respectable man, wealthy, well-known. A good prospect. Your mother was well to accept him. Why won't you?"

Cora's American accent had tried steely, but being too gentle for her own good had subsided into pleading. The food in her mouth soured abruptly; she could feel her tongue burning with the bitterness. She peeked under her lashes at the brunette across the cushions, gazing placidly at her over the tops of her hunched knees, and felt bitterness broil in her stomach like the tempests of a violent storm. The tray was still balanced on the carved tabletop, and the crests of silver around the edges glimmered gold, like the intimate fuzz of hair on the back of a neck.

Rosamund made a cold goodbye and left the platter of snacks, darkening to faint red in the setting African sun, beside the sighing Cora.

She suddenly wasn't very hungry.


End file.
